How to Stop Avoidance Coping

Anxiety conditions like social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are often reinforced with avoidance coping. Avoidance coping is the act of avoiding certain thoughts, feelings or situations to minimize or prevent anxiety. However, the more you avoid anxiety-provoking situations, the more you are affected. You can stop avoidance coping behaviors by first bringing awareness to the avoidance. Then, you can overcome it by using techniques to control anxiety and by gradually exposing yourself to situations that cause anxiety.

Method 1 - Building a Tolerance to Anxiety-Provoking Situations

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→ Start small. If you learn to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, then you won’t require avoidance coping. Exposure therapy often helps lessen anxiety surrounding certain situations. However, you don’t want to push yourself too quickly into an anxiety-provoking situation.

→ Practice exposure by gradually building your tolerance. You can do this by starting with an activity or event that causes the least amount of anxiety. Once you have mastered it, you can gradually move to one that causes more, and more. Make sure that you give yourself a realistic timeframe to accomplish this goal. Keep in mind that it will not happen overnight and you will likely be a work in progress for a while and that is okay.

→ You can do this more effectively by making a list. Rank those situations that provoke anxiety for you. For example, you might list, "speaking in front of an audience," "asking someone out on a date," or "going to a restaurant alone." Start with the least anxiety-provoking situation and work your way up.

→ Whenever you accomplish a goal, find a way to celebrate or commemorate each step among the way. This can even be something small such as, writing it in your journal and congratulating yourself out loud.

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→ Make a plan. Plan to expose yourself to situations you typically avoid. Prepare yourself for the experience of anxiety by choosing one thought, feeling, activity, or situation that typically causes anxiety.

→ For instance, if you want to practice going to a restaurant by yourself, you might first start with getting take out on your own a few times. Then, you might ask to be seated.

→ Another way to devise your plan might be in levels of exposure. For instance, you might be okay getting breakfast alone, but dinner makes you anxious. You'll want to gradually build up to eating supper in a restaurant alone.

→ To increase the chances that you will stick with your plan, you may also want to have an accountability buddy. This could be a mental health professional, a friend, or family member. Make sure that they are familiar with the steps you have chosen to follow and that they will help to hold you accountable.

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→ Soothe yourself when anxiety strikes. When you expose yourself to the anxiety-provoking situation, employ your self-soothing techniques. In addition to deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation, you might listen to calming music or state phrases of affirmation, such as “I can do this” or “I am brave.”

→ Another helpful phrase to repeat to yourself is, “No anxiety can last forever.” This will help you to remember that what you are feeling is temporary.

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→ Perform reality testing on your thoughts. Once you start to get used to the sensations of anxiety, you will need to focus on the thoughts surrounding these situations. Reality testing allows you to assess a situation from an objective point of view to reduce the anxiety it causes.

→ For example, you might think, “I can’t ask Mr. Thomas to explain the assignment after class. Last time he yelled at me.” Try to see this situation from different angles. Are there other ways of viewing it?

→ The reality is that just because Mr. Thomas yelled last time doesn’t mean he will this time. Also, he may have yelled for reasons separate from your question. Maybe he had a bad day and was tired. Perhaps this time, he is in a better mood.

→ If you are unable to adjust your thoughts on your own, then you can also try contacting an objective person to help bring you back to reality. Tell them what is going on and what you are feeling anxious about.

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→ Get assistance from a professional. The process of learning to tolerate anxiety-provoking situations can be challenging. You can seek out help from a professional to assist you in stopping your avoidance coping behaviors. One form of therapy, known as exposure therapy, has been shown to be effective at helping reduce anxiety and the events that provoke it.

→ Keep in mind that there are lots of different types and levels of exposure therapy. For example, your therapist may decide to either use a graded approach to expose you to things that cause you a mild amount of anxiety first, or they may use a flooding approach and expose you to the thing or things that cause you the most anxiety first. Depending on what causes you anxiety, they may use in vivo exposure therapy, which actually exposes you to the things you fear, or imaginal exposure therapy where you imagine the exposure happening.

Method 2 - Learning to Control Anxiety

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→ Practice deep breathing. Stress and anxiety result in labored breathing. You can effectively control anxiety and activate the body’s natural relaxation response with deep breathing, which will counter your brain’s sense that you are in danger. These exercises help you realize that you are safe—your heart rate slows, your blood pressure falls, and your muscles start to relax.

→ Begin a deep breathing practice that you can use in the place of avoidance coping.

→ Try breathing in slowly with your nose to a count of five. Hold the breath briefly. Then, exhale through your mouth to a count of five. Repeat this several times until you start to feel more relaxed.

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→ Do progressive muscle relaxation. Often, when you face anxiety, you tense up various muscle groups. Learning to soften and relax these muscles can help you lessen the anxiety you feel.

→ To practice progressive muscle relaxation, find a quiet, comfortable place to sit or lie down. Start either at the top of your head or the bottom of your feet. Working your way up, tense each muscle group. Hold the tension for a moment, and then release it. Notice how the relaxed state feels. Continue over your entire body.

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→ Gain an observer's perspective on anxious thoughts. Stepping back and viewing your thoughts from a different lens may help you to notice that they don’t have to have power over you. This also helps you gain objectivity for when you want to start challenging anxious thoughts.

→ When an anxious thought arises, vocalize it. You might say, “I am having the thought that I want to skip the social event. I don’t want people looking at me.”

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→ Try mindfulness. Mindfulness can be used throughout everyday life to help you regulate your attention. It helps when anxious thoughts are overtaking your brain to slow down and focus on the present moment. The goal is to focus entirely on the activity at hand without giving any attention to competing thoughts.

→ You can do mindfulness when you are eating by only focusing on the sensations of the food, chewing, and swallowing. You can also take a mindful shower, dress mindfully, or drive with mindfulness.

→ To make this a habit, include mindfulness exercises as a regular part of your schedule. This will help to increase your awareness of your body, breath, and mind all of the time.

Method 3 - Keeping Track of Your Avoidance

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→ Dedicate some time to observing and logging avoidance coping. To stop avoidance coping, you need to know that you’re doing it. Spend some time acting as an observer to your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

→ Ask people who ae close to you to let you know when you appear to be avoiding the things that cause you anxiety.

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→ Write down the situations that you tend to avoid. Keep a notebook with you so you can jot down any interesting information you learn through your observations. Notice which situations prompt you to avoid and what you do to avoid them.

→ For example, you might avoid going into a certain building at your school because it reminds you of an embarrassing incident that happened there.

→ You may be surprised by the lengths you will go to avoid things that make you feel anxious. For example, you might pretend to be ill or lie about having a previous engagement.

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→ Note the thoughts and feelings you have when avoiding. While you may engage in avoidance coping to prevent anxiety, you may find that it has the opposite effect. Avoiding limits you from being able to grow and learn from what you fear. And, it ends up adding to your stress and anxiety.

→ Write down your thoughts and feelings when you avoid. For example, you might avoid the building, but still feel anxious. Or, you find yourself thinking, "I'm such a freak."